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Solidity, caution, integrity, efficiency. Lack of imagination, hypocrisy. These qualities characterize the middle classes in everycountry, but in England they are national characteristics.

E. M. Forster

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E. M. Forster
Age: 91 †
Born: 1879
Born: January 1
Died: 1970
Died: June 7
Biographer
Essayist
Librettist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Writer
London
England
Edward Morgan Forster
E Forster
EM Forster
England
Efficiency
Imagination
Hypocrisy
Middle
Classes
Quality
Characteristics
Class
Qualities
Character
Lack
Characterize
Integrity
Solidity
National
Caution

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The work of art assumes the existence of the perfect spectator, and is indifferent to the fact that no such person exists.
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I really don't know what happens next -- one so seldom does.
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I am actually what my age and my upbringing have made me - a bourgeois who adheres to the British constitution, adheres to it rather than supports it, and the fact that this isn't dignified doesn't worry me.
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Aziz winked at him slowly and said: “...There are many ways of being a man mine is to express what is deepest in my heart.
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How can I know what I think till I see what I say?
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If God could tell the story of the Universe, the Universe would become fictitious.
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When we were only acquaintances, you let me be myself, but now you're always protecting me... I won't be protected. I will choose for myself what is ladylike and right. To shield me is an insult. Can't I be trusted to face the truth but I must get it second-hand through you? A woman's place!
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I have said that each aspect of the novel demands a different quality of the reader. Well, the prophetic aspect demands two qualities: humility and the suspension of the sense of humour.
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Have you ever noticed that there are people who do things which are most indelicate, and yet at the same time - beautiful?
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It is devilish difficult to criticise society & also create human beings.
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There was something better in life than this rub­bish, if only he could get to it—love—nobility—big spaces where passion clasped peace, spaces no science could reach, but they existed for ever, full of woods some of them, and arched with majestic sky and a friend. . .
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What is the good of your stars and trees, your sunrise and the wind, if they do not enter into our daily lives?
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As her time in Florence drew to a close she was only at ease amongst those to whom she felt indifferent.
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If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.
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The present flowed by them like a stream. The tree rustled. It had made music before they were born, and would continue after their deaths, but its song was of the moment. The moment had passed. The tree rustled again. Their senses were sharpened, and they seemed to apprehend life. Life passed. The tree rustled again.
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Excuse my mistakes, realize my limitations. Life is not easy as we know it on the earth.
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This solitude opressed her she was accustomed to have her thoughts confirmed by others or, at all events, contradicted it was too dreadful not to know whether she was thinking right or wrong.
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When love flies it is remembered not as love but as something else. Blessed are the uneducated, who forget it entirely, and are never conscious of folly or pruriency in the past, of long aimless conversations.
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Money pads the edges of things.
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